'Legacy of beauty' : The Frick Collection, 1935

NEW YORK 1995

1 ke Trustees of

Tke Frick C ol lection

kave tke konor to announce
tkat tke Collection

Wll

"ill ke opened to tke puklic
on Monday, Deoemker sixteentk
nineteen kundred and tkirty-Tive
One Hast Seventietk Street
New York

Oval Room

Introduction

The opening ofThe Frick Collection on December 16, 1935, cre-
ated great excitement in the American press. For years, while his
family still lived in the residence, Mr. Fricks treasures had been
viewed only by close friends and by others who gained special per-
mission. After Mrs. Fricks death in 1931, the home was converted
to a gallery that could accommodate the general public. When the
doors opened, the revelation of the full extent of Mr. Fricks benefi-
cence was greeted with astonishment and awe.

The Collection has preserved many cuttings from newspapers
and magazines reporting the occasion. It seemed to us fitting to
mark the sixtieth anniversary of our opening by printing a booklet
reproducing a sampling of excerpts from the contemporary press;
they offer a delightful and interesting range of reactions to the
event, which bring vividly to life a chapter in the history of the
Collection and of American museums. One editorial (from The
New York Times ) is reprinted in full. In addition to portions of
these articles, we have included much of the press release from the
Collection which explained the ideals and goals of the founder and
Trustees. There are also illustrations to show some of the rooms as
they appeared when first opened to the public.

We begin four years earlier with the announcement of the
bequest in October 1931, exactly one week after Mrs. Fricks death.
The article provided a detailed examination of the art in the Col-
lection: four columns of text, with a separate list of all of the
paintings left by Henry Clay Frick to the public and the subse-
quent additions to the Collection by the Trustees since his death in
1919. Some of the very large prices paid by Mr. Frick for paintings

were given accurately in the press at this time and in later years, the
most expensive single purchase being that of the portrait of Philip
IV by Velazquez ($400,000). These notable prices are emphasized
because alongside the announcement in 1931 is a report on the sale
of paintings in the London auction rooms for the preceding year:
“It has not been a good year for picture sales.... The highest price
paid for a picture was £6,825 given for a charming portrait of a little
girl by Romney, who is one of the surest draws in the auction
room.”

The next significant news reports are from January 1935, when
the new building of the Frick Art Reference Library was com-
pleted and opened immediately adjacent to the Collection. It
housed thirteen floors of book and photograph stacks. At that time
it was announced in the press that the Library was connected to
the Frick mansion, “which contains the famous $50,000,000 Frick
collection of paintings and which, in accordance with the will of
the late owner, probably will be opened to the public next sum-
mer.” Summer turned into fall, and it was nearly winter before the
Collection was finally ready for visitors.

Then in December the papers devoted numerous pages, some-
times four or five in one issue, to descriptions of the Collection
room by room. The New York Herald Tribune listed the names of all
of the 700 persons invited to the preview and reception. Among
many who were celebrated in the social and political worlds —
including the Chief Justice and the Mayor — were some of the
best-known industrialists, financiers, collectors, dealers, artists,
and art collectors. There were Col. and Mrs. Lindbergh, as well as

3

ms

Library

members of the Astor, Bache, Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller,
Straus, Sulzberger, Vanderbilt, and Warburg families. In the first
two weeks after the preview, there were more than 3,700 visitors to
the Collection. In the first five months the average was 720 persons
a day. Total attendance for the year ended December 15, 1936, was
131,742; that was for six days a week for eleven months (the Collec-
tion was closed in August). The hours were from ten to four
o’clock; after nine months, the Collection was opened on Sunday
afternoons and closed on Mondays and the time extended each day
by an hour. Tickets, which were first required to control the large
numbers expected as visitors, were soon eliminated, and many of
the guide-ropes, which initially created passageways through all
the rooms, were done away with or lowered.

The Director and Trustees were extremely sensitive to the criti-
cisms concerning such measures taken as precautions in the early
months. As soon as attendance dropped, many changes were made,
not only concerning the opening hours and the restrictive controls
of the visitors between the guide-ropes; in addition, the double
hanging of paintings in the large galleries was eliminated, inade-
quate lighting on some of the pictures and sculpture was improved,
some of the relatively modern furniture which crowded a few of
the rooms was removed, more seats for resting were provided, and
there was further labeling. A handbook of the entire collection,
very much needed, was being prepared. Throughout the first years,
month after month saw improvements in viewing the works of art.

There was actually little criticism, however, when the museum
first opened. Lewis Mumford writing in The New Yorker was a

notable objector: he deplored showing the paintings in the envi-
ronment of a home and wished that the Trustees would banish the
“sculptural bric-a-brac” to the cellar. His was certainly a minority
opinion. There also was a remarkable lack of critical remarks of a
social or political nature considering that 1935 was the year that the
Social Security and Work Projects Administration programs were
initiated in response to the Depression. Many critics regarded the
new museum as a “Peoples Museum”; also many said that the qual-
ity of its collections was “unsurpassed anywhere.” They believed
that the opening was of major importance to the art world in every
land and a milestone in the history of the city. It was a “legacy of
beauty”; “here has been captured the very essence of beauty,” one of
the more florid authors wrote, “the spirit itself of fine and lovely
things.”

Charles Ryskamp
Director

This publication is above all indebted to the investigation of Bernice
Davidson , Research Curator of The Frick Collection. It has also profited
greatly from the comment of Joseph Focarino y Editor for the Collection.

Susan Galas si y Assistant Curator ; helped us at every turn. Don Swanson , of
the Frick Art Reference Library , has offered invaluable support. The design is
the work of Ron Gordon of the Oliphant Press.

5

Fragonard Room

from The Art News, October io, 1931

from the New York Herald Tribune ,
January 6, 1935

Masterpieces of
Frick Collection
Willed to City

Under the terms of the will of the late Henry Clay
Frick, who died in 1919, New York City will
acquire what is probably the finest collection of its
kind in the world. For, with the death of Mrs.
Frick at Prides Crossing on October 3, the famous
Frick mansion and its treasures become public
property under the administration of a corpora-
tion endowed by the testator with $15,000,000. It
is not yet possible to ascertain definitely how soon
the house will be opened as a museum, but when
this occurs the Frick collection should be to New
York what the Wallace Collection has long been
to London.

Over a considerable period of years the Frick
mansion and its contents have remained more or
less inaccessible to all save a small circle of friends
and experts and it was only on very rare occasions
that single works were loaned for benefit exhibi-
tions in New York. The remarkable nature of the
collection, is however, generally known. In artistic
importance and scope the... gallery, numbering
about one hundred and forty examples, is by gen-
eral consensus of opinion of outstanding signifi-
cance. Almost every canvas comes from some
famous collection or is in itself historic....

Mr. Frick’s collection of early bronzes and
enamels is likewise considered by connoisseurs to
outrank any other in this country. Especially
notable are the famous Limoges enamels and sev-
eral rare bronzes and triptychs from the Morgan
collection which are said to have cost their pur-
chaser in the neighborhood of $1,500,000. The
Renaissance bronze group is also exceptionally
fine. Among the sculptures are to be found impor-
tant works by Clodion, Falconet, Houdon, Pajou,
Pollaiuolo and Sansovino....

Frick Library of Art
Opens in Its
New Home

....Miss Helen Clay Frick, daughter of the once
prominent coke and steel operator, is director of
the library and is responsible for its collection of
more than 200,000 photographic reproductions
of the masterpieces of sculptors and painters, both
past and contemporary, in Europe and America.

Second to Witt Collection

Miss Frick has succeeded in building up the insti-
tution to a point wherein, in number of items, it

ranks second only to the collection of Sir Robert
Witt, in London, while it outdoes his display in
the amount of information gathered about and
appended to each picture.

The Frick Art Reference Library was organized
by Miss Frick in 1920, a year after her father died
leaving his rare art collection and home to the
public with the stipulation in his will that it be held
for the personal enjoyment of his wife during her
lifetime. Mrs. Frick died in 1931 and since then
alterations have been started to convert the man-
sion into a suitable public gallery for the pic-
tures....

Has Vast Photographic Resources

The library... has vast photographic resources....
The work of this department has proved par-
ticularly valuable to genealogists because of its
exhaustive collection of pictures of early Ameri-
can families. Recently one of the institution’s
constantly traveling photographers obtained
2,000 family portraits on one trip to Baltimore.

The Frick collection was scheduled to be
opened to the public last year, but shifts in the rock
formation below it have greatly delayed the work
of converting the mansion into an art gallery....
Blasting, of course, is impossible because of the
fragile collection stored in the building’s vault,
with the result that all foundation excavation has
had to be done by hand.

7

Etching of the Frick Art Reference Library by Ernest P. Roth, 1934

from The Art News, January 12, 1935

New Frick
Reference Library
Is Ideally Equipped
for Art Research

The long-anticipated public opening of the Frick
Art Reference Library, which will take place on
January 14, is an event of no small importance to
the art world in general and to the scholar in par-
ticular. With the completion of the new $850,000
F rench Renaissance building, equipped with every
modern facility and designed for the utmost use-
fulness, the wealth of material in the library’s col-
lections now becomes available to an even wider
public than it has formerly served. Students who
have hitherto used the library will be admitted to
the building without further preliminaries and
admission cards will be issued to new students pre-
senting suitable references....

The Indiana limestone structure, with a
frontage of fifty feet and a depth of 150, was
designed byjohn Russell Pope to harmonize with
the former Henry Clay Frick mansion, with which
it will ultimately be connected with a wing, when
the residence is opened as a museum....

from the New York Herald Tribune ,
January 6, 1935

from Time, January 21, 1935

from The New York Times , December 8, 1935

The Documentation
of the Masterpieces
of the World

By Royal Cortissoz

The Purpose of the
Frick Art Reference Library

The first week of the new year is most auspiciously
marked by the opening of the new building of the
Frick Art Reference Library at 10 East Seventy-
first Street. I speak with peculiar feeling on this
subject, for I have been for many years a collector
of books and photographs illustrating the history
of art and I know what it means to grapple with,
for example, thousands of reproductions. Segre-
gate them as you may, they still fall upon moments
of disorder, they overflow their cabinets and alto-
gether cause trouble. At the Frick one realizes as
in a dream the fulfillment of ones dearest wish. In
the beautiful new building designed by John Rus-
sell Pope Miss Frick has organized her material in
consummate fashion....

Picture Library

....Many years ago Miss Helen Frick began to
study art seriously so that she could better appre-
ciate the things her fathers dealers were buying for
him. She acquired an extensive collection of art
books, was glad to let fellow students use them.
The Frick art library grew and grew. A librarian
had to be hired, then assistants; finally a house was
built to hold it all. The Frick Art Reference
Library, like Sir Robert Witts in London, chose
to specialize in photographs of works of art. It did
not content itself with buying prints of pictures in
museums, private collections and dealer galleries.
Instead, it put special photographers under con-
tract in France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain, the
U.S., sent them to obscure collections, little-
known churches, private houses....

At its opening bang-haired Royal Cortissoz,
most learned of Manhattan’s art critics, sat him-
self down to test the library’s resources. Shooting
his cuffs, he called for material on Botticelli’s
Abundance in the British Museum and the portrait
of Alessandro del Borro in Berlin. The telauto-
graph squiggled and in a few minutes stack girls
emerged with two folders. Critic Cortissoz’ little
goatee waggled with pleasure to find attached to
an excellent photograph of the Botticelli drawing
the date, a list of all the reproductions that have
ever been published, all previous owners, all exhi-
bitions [and] passages from text books....

Frick Art Will Go
to Public Dec. 16

Steel Master’s Collection
to Be Turned Over to the City
As People’s Museum.

Expansion Is Complete

Fifth Avenue Home
With Priceless Treasures
Will Be Shown at
Reception Wednesday.

The superb art collection of Henry Clay Frick is
about to be turned over to the public to whom the
steel and coke pioneer willed it sixteen years ago.

Long awaited as of major importance in the
world of esthetic creation as well as in the history
of the city, the event will take place on Monday,
Dec. 16, following a formal reception next
Wednesday afternoon, at which city officials,
museum executives, critical authorities and lead-
ing artists will be present. Five days later the cele-
brated mansion on Fifth Avenue between
Seventieth and Seventy-first Streets will become
in fact the museum its owner intended it to be.

Mr. Frick died on Dec. 2, 1919. The same day
Elbert H. Gary, a long-standing friend of the
industrialist, announced that the treasures which

9

from a Press Release issued by

The Frick Collection, December n, 1935

specialists considered to comprise an institution
in themselves would eventually become city prop-
erty. The filing of the will a few days later con-
firmed this announcement....

It will be difficult for visitors to the new insti-
tution.. .to forget that the man who assembled the
paintings was himself a figure of tremendous pro-
portions in the industrial development of this
country. Henry Clay Frick, who did not believe in
compromise, who did things on a grand scale and
built up a fortune of scores of millions, was cer-
tainly one of the most fabulous capitalists pro-
duced in America. The collection he has
bequeathed to the City of New York seems certain
to be of the same stature.

Press Release

The Frick Collection, including the works of art
and residence at 1 East 70th Street of the late
Henry Clay Frick, will open officially this after-
noon with a reception between 4 and 7 o’clock to
state and city officials, trustees of museums,
museum directors and others especially interested
in art, as well as people prominent in the life of the
city. During the remainder of the week, final
details in the organization of the Collection will
be completed and on Monday morning, Decem-
ber 16 at 10 o’clock the Collection will be open to
the public in accordance with the provisions of

10

Mr. Frick’s will.

On his death in 1919 Mr. Frick bequeathed his
great art collection and his residence on Fifth
Avenue as The Frick Collection “for the purpose
of establishing and maintaining a gallery of art,”
of “encouraging and developing the study of the
fine arts, and of advancing the general knowledge
of kindred subjects. ..to the end that the same shall
be a public gallery of art to which the entire pub-
lic shall forever have access, subject only to rea-
sonable regulations,” and subject to use by Mrs.
Frick during her lifetime.

This collection is recognized as one of the
world’s great treasuries of art. It was assembled by
Mr. Frick not only as an art lover himself but for
use as part of his home and practically every piece
of it fitted into his conception of that home. It was
his desire, too, that that conception be carried out
in bequeathing the Collection to the public.

In carrying out the provisions of Mr. Frick’s
will, the Trustees have maintained the residential
character of the building. In order, however, to
accommodate as many persons as possible at one
time in a residential building of limited capacity,
the area for the display of the objects of art has
been more than doubled by new construction
undertaken since the death of Mrs. Frick in 1931.
Plans for the issuance of tickets of admission have
been devised which the Trustees believe will
enable the founder’s will to be fulfilled for the ben-
efit, as he wished, of “the entire public.”

These tickets will be issued without charge on

week days between 10 o’clock in the morning and
4 o’clock in the afternoon at the ticket office of the
Collection and will specify the hour and day when
the holder may visit the Collection.

In order that as many people as possible may
view the Collection, visitors will be required to
follow only the indicated direction of circulation
which will be marked by ropes on standards.

The Trustees hope by these arrangements to
accommodate a maximum number of visitors and
at the same time allow each one a sufficient time
to examine the works of art, as well as prevent the
obstruction of view which would necessarily
accompany admission of large crowds....

General Information

The Bequest

Under the will of Henry Clay Frick, who died
in New York on December 2, 1919, his residence
on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets
and “all the books, pictures, ... porcelains, enamels,
bronzes, statuary, rugs, tapestries,... antique or
artistic furniture and furnishings” were be-
queathed to a Board of Trustees....

The will also established an endowment fund
for the maintenance, guarding, and eventual
enlargement of the house and the collection,
under the direction of the Trustees. The will fur-
ther provided that Mrs. Frick should enjoy the use

of the house and its contents, if used by her as one
of her residences.

The Trustees

The Trustees named by Mr. Frick were his wife,
the late Mrs. Henry Clay Frick; his daughter, Miss
Helen C. Frick; his son, Childs Frick; George F.
Baker, Jr., John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Horace Have-
meyer, the late J. Horace Harding, the late Walker
D. Hines, the late Lewis Cass Ledyard.

As at present constituted the Board consists of
Childs Frick, President; Andrew W. Mellon, Vice
President; George F. Baker, Jr., Treasurer; Helen
C. Frick, Secretary; John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
Horace Havemeyer, Junius S. Morgan and Mait-
land Griggs.

In 1920 the Trustees formed the corporation
provided for by the will and became the owners of
the Collection, the building and the fund. Mrs.
Frick continued to occupy the building during her
lifetime.

Meanwhile, to round out her fathers inten-
tions, Miss Frick at her own expense organized in
1921 the Frick Art Reference Library, which today
ranks as one of the greatest institutions of its kind.
In 1924 the Trustees joined her in erecting for it,
on an unused site belonging to the Collection, at
Nos. 6 and 8 East 71st Street, a building contigu-
ous to the Frick residence....

Conception Adopted

Making the Frick Collection available to the pub-
lic implied more than merely opening the doors
and treating the building and its furnishings as a
museum. The Collection does not aim at compet-
ing with vast institutions that attempt to illustrate
the art of every country and period. The house was
primarily a home. From the beginning it was seen
that to apply to it a technique that would necessi-
tate exhibiting its works of art in surroundings
stripped of their individuality and furnishings
would be to alter irreparably its meaning and
appeal. Every epoch, in its more active and per-
sonal aspects, tends to reuse the art of the past in
new combinations as part of a living whole.

The Trustees foresaw in the Frick Collection an
example of American domestic architecture and
life in the early 20th century, comparable to the
houses of the 18th and early 19th centuries which
are now being preserved as historical monuments.
The mansion itself, designed in 1913 by Carrere
and Hastings, was a work of art of its period. In
other words, there was an historical factor in the
house and in the way in which its works of art were
arranged that surpassed in interest any possible
methodical or chronological grouping of the
paintings and sculpture.

Consequently, in planning to open the Collec-
tion to the public, the Trustees felt that its resi-
dential character should be maintained, and that
only such alterations should be made as might be

counseled by administrative necessities or that
would make possible and easy a one-way circula-
tion of a large number of visitors.

New Construction

....It was desired that... [any additions to the]
architecture should be made consonant with that
of the old house, yet given an aesthetic appeal of
its own.

On the remaining north end of the old carriage
court and on the site of the original Frick Art Ref-
erence Library, an Oval Room, a new East Gallery
and a small auditorium were projected. The last,
designed for lectures to be given by the Collection,
was to be so located that, without disturbing visi-
tors to the Collection, it might also be used for lec-
tures given by the Art Reference Library. These
new galleries and lecture hall it was planned to
make distinctive in their decoration but not with-
out a feeling of harmony with the old house....

Of the minor rooms on the main floor only one
was sacrificed. Another was converted into a small
gallery, while a third was reconstructed to contain
the Boucher panels painted for Madame de Pom-
padour’s boudoir in her chateau at Crecy, trans-
ferred from its former location on the second
floor....

It was found necessary, without damaging or
defacing the original house, to install a complete
air-conditioning system, in which was also
included all the new construction — Oval Room,

11

East Gallery, Lecture Room, and Court. The air
currents, of a fixed temperature and relative
humidity, are directed so as to preserve the paint-
ings and furniture.

Meanwhile the old library building, no longer
large enough to house the books and photographs
it had acquired, had to be replaced by a new build-
ing, also completely air-conditioned, on a site
acquired by the Trustees for the purpose at Nos.
io and 12 East 71st Street, immediately adjoining
the Collection building....

Building Procedure

From the outset it was realized that, while such
extensive operations were in progress, the paint-
ings, enamels, and other valuable objects which
the house contained could not be left in place. The
Trustees accordingly decided to construct at once,
in the basement of the house, a fireproof, water-
proof, burglar-proof, air-conditioned vault, large
enough to contain the most precious and delicate
objects in order to protect them from deteriora-
tion or damage while construction was going on in
close proximity....

from the New York World-Telegram,
December n, 1935

Home to Serve
as a Gallery
For Collection

By William Engle

In the great stone mansion at 1 East 70th St. one
of the worlds great art collections — paintings,
enamels, sculpture — was revealed and what
Henry Clay Frick asked before he died on Decem-
ber 2, 1919, was granted.

It is the Frick collection, shown this afternoon
to State and city officials, museum trustees and
artists....

It is endowed. So is the building. Old,
bewhiskered, dreaming Henry Frick, after he
piled up a mighty fortune as a steelmaker who
would not take back talk even from Andrew
Carnegie, said in his will that he wanted that old
home of his and those paintings of the masters to
keep alive in America an appreciation of what a
God-given mind can do with a brush or a chisel.

Unlike Other Galleries.

He did not have the chance when he was young to
see what he has left for the rest of us to see. He had
holes in his shoes and he worked when others were
going to high school dances.

His gallery of art, he said, was to be established
to the end that the same shall be a public gallery
of art to which the entire public shall forever have
access.”

But the place does not seem to be an art gallery.
It is unlike any other art gallery anywhere. It is Mr.
Fricks old homestead, and that is what he wanted
it to be as long as marble and canvas last.

Throughout his lifetime he got together the
treasures that catch the light from the tall win-
dows today, and almost every piece that he took
into the place was chosen for a specific nook or
patch of wall; he wanted that kind of art gallery to
stay on after he was gone. And here it is today,
something to take away the breath of anyone who
likes the majestic work of the dreamers of the ages.

Bequeathed to Trustees.

The whole thing no longer is essentially a part of
Mr. Frick. The will made it something for every
one. It bequeathed “all the books, pictures, porce-
lains, enamels, bronzes, statuary, rugs, tapestry,
antique and artistic furniture” to a board of
trustees, and it instructed the board to get the
works ready for the public. Now it is ready.

12

from The New York Times , December 13, 1935

from the New York Sun , December 11, 1935

Mr. Frick s
Monument

It is remembered that Mr. Henry Frick, in show-
ing a friend his art collection, expressed the wish
that it should be his monument. A more impres-
sive monument to that which dominated all of
Mr. Fricks other interests, activities and aspira-
tions could hardly be found. It was to be built in
the opportunity which he wished to give the
American people of seeing the famous paintings
and other works of art of his choice without cross-
ing the ocean.

An American traveler in Ireland in the “Black
and Tan” period, pausing for tea at an inn in
County Galway, found a portrait of Mr. Frick in
the dining room. The selection may have been
prompted by the fact that he was a notably hand-
some man of distinguished appearance and that
his portrait would adorn any room in which it was
placed. But he was not the type to become a pop-
ular idol. He was an innately modest man who
shunned public attention. The distinction which
he thought to deserve was that of giving back to
the public, out of the smoke of flaming ovens
whose fires he lighted for the age of steel, some-
thing as near the infinite as finite hands can fash-
ion.

The collection, with an appropriate setting for
every painting or vase or bit of sculpture, was

described in fullest detail in yesterdays Times.
Every reader should put the page aside in prepa-
ration for a visit to this new possession into which
the American people, and especially the people of
New York, have come, after the years of the sister
arts’ preparation for its perfect presentation, in
background, in lighting, in arrangement. The
house with all its art is something more than a
museum. It is a potential addition to the home of
every person, whether in tenement, apartment or
mansion, who becomes intimately acquainted
with what it holds of beauty — away from all the
ugliness in the world. The monument is not the
collection; it is the love of the best things which
the collection stirs in all who take the time to know
it thoroughly. Provision has been made to give
every one who wishes it this opportunity.

Frick Museum
Finally Opened to
the Public

More than four years after it was supposed to be
turned over to the public the Frick art collection
was opened today — to the press at noon and to an
extensive gathering of private guests later in the
afternoon. Visitors, however, found the delay

amply accounted for. The entire interior of the res-
idence on Fifth Avenue, between Seventieth and
Seventy-first streets, has been remodeled, redeco-
rated in lavish style and converted into a fitting
setting for the display of the paintings and other
objects of art housed there....

Remodeling is Effective.

Too much credit can hardly be given to Frederick
Mortimer Clapp, organizing director, for the
manner in which he has remodeled the interior to
provide for the effective exhibition of the objects
displayed. The result is far removed in its quiet and
reserved richness from the bleak atmosphere of
the usual art gallery. One has rather the feeling of
entering some private palace — as indeed this is —
designed for the eyes of a favored few only. The
color scheme of the various walls has been subtly
varied to afford the best possible background for
the paintings. It runs through various grays, rang-
ing from subdued blue-greens, to ashes-of-roses
linked by harmonious intermediate tints. The rich
stuffs used take on under varying lights, a silver
sheen that weaves the whole into a quiet harmony
that is particularly appealing. The long vista from
the Fifth avenue end of the old art gallery down
through the intervening rooms to the east wall,
where the portrait of Mme. d’Haussonville by
Ingres is enthroned in the center, is most effective
and emphasizes the... care... taken to present the
collection as a harmonious whole.

*3

from the New York Herald Tribune,
December 12, 1935

Changes and Contrasts.

The porte-cochere on the Seventieth street side of
the building has been converted into a reception
room. Here the visitor to the gallery will enter. The
old carriage court beyond, formerly uncovered,
has been housed over and turned into an interior
court with pool and fountain bordered with for-
mal greenery....

Frick Gallery of Art
Opens With 700 at
its Preview

Vast Treasure, Centered On
136 Master Paintings,

Becomes Accessible To Public Monday

Donors Children Receive the Guests

The Frick collection, one of the worlds great trea-
sure houses of art, opened its doors yesterday for
the first time. Seven hundred persons visited the
great house at Fifth Avenue and Seventieth Street
for the private view....

from the New York World-Telegram,
December 12, 1935

Mellon Visits Museum

To see the collection, which has been almost her-
metically sealed since Mr. Fricks death, while
Mrs. Frick occupied the house, and while it was
being altered and enlarged, came an extraordinary
group. Andrew W. Mellon, the associate of Mr.
Fricks youth, who began his even more remark-
able art collection at the suggestion of his friend,
was there with his daughter, Mrs. David K.E.
Bruce. John D. Rockefeller jr., co-trustee of the
collection with Mr. Mellon, was also there with
several members of his family.

Then there were figures from the world of art,
like Herbert E. Winlock, director of the Metro-
politan Museum of Art, and William Zorach, the
sculptor. Many older men and women who had
known Mr. and Mrs. Frick were present, to be
received by Miss Helen C . Frick and Childs Frick,
children of the gallery’s founder....

THE FRICK COLLECTION

1 East 70th Street, New York

LECTURE TICKET

Carnegies at Preview
of Frick Mansion
Art

They Join the Throng
of Sable -Wrapped Dowagers
in Viewing Treasures Left to City.

By Helen Worden.

Andrew Carnegie’s widow and daughter were
among those invited to the preview yesterday of
the art collection left to New York by his lifelong
enemy, Henry Clay Frick.

Mrs. Carnegie and Mrs. Roswell Miller good-
naturedly buried the hatchet and joined the
throng of sable-wrapped dowagers who climbed
the red velvet-carpeted, white marble steps of the
Frick mansion at 1 E. 70th St.

Police Headquarters was also well represented.
I went in with the bomb squad. The Holmes Pro-
tection Agency had fifty private detectives guard-
ing special entrances.

The soiree was the last social fling of the Frick
family in the mansion built by steel millions.
Helen Frick and her brother, Childs Frick,
trustees of the art collection left to the city by their
father, received the guests.

14

from The Art News, December 14, 1935

from The New York Times , December 17, 1935

Fifth Avenue
Home Remodeled
to Display Great
Collection

By Dr. Alfred M. Frankfurter

...Today... the Frick Collection far transcends its
purely memorial function. Its opening is one of
the most important events in the history of Amer-
ican collecting and appreciation of art — not only
because it makes available to scholars as well as to
the public a group of paintings and objects of a
standard of quality unsurpassed anywhere and yet
hitherto almost impossible of access, but also
because it marks for New York the first occasion
upon which one of its great private collections,
intact and in its original surroundings, has become
public property. In America, as a matter of fact,
only the Gardner Collection at Boston and the
Johnson at Philadelphia have, in a less grand man-
ner, antedated the Frick Collection as a cisatlantic
parallel to the Wallace, the Jacquemart- Andre,
the Horne and the Liechtenstein houses in Lon-
don, Paris, Florence and Vienna.

That New York now also will possess a, so to
speak, private museum is an interesting commen-
tary upon the maturity of collecting in this coun-

THE FRICK COLLECTION

1 East 70th Street New York

GOOD FOR

SATURDAY

ADMIT ONE

try. And, with such a beginning, one may safely
hope that there will, one day, be other collections,
like the Frick, left to the public amid surroundings
personal to their originators; there are several such
in New York which are not difficult to imagine as
handsome companions to the great house at Fifth
Avenue and Seventieth Street.

It is good, I think, that there should be such
institutions in a huge city like New York — smaller

art centers beside the great, impressive bulk of a
museum like the Metropolitan. For they seem to
me far to outweigh in the intimacy and charm and
personal quality which are their great advantages,
the defect of decentralization which is so often
charged against them. Predicated this is, of course,
on a standard of excellence attained by the Frick
and perhaps three or four other collections in New
York City....

Frick Art Museum
Opened to Public

Tickets Are Required

But They Are Given Out Free —

Dr. Clapp, Director, Pleased
With Working of Plans.

At 10 o’clock yesterday morning the doors of the
Frick Art Collection were opened at 1 East Sev-
entieth Street, and the public had its first oppor-
tunity to see the magnificent legacy it received
from Henry Clay Frick, coke and steel pioneer....

At the end of the day Dr. Frederick Mortimer
Clapp, organizing director of the collection, was
thoroughly satisfied with the operation of the
museum.

*S

from the New York Post , December 16, 1935

from the New York World-Telegram ,
December 14, 1935

Wants Collection to Be Enjoyed.

“We are interested in having the largest number of
people see the collection under conditions which
will enable them to see it with greatest enjoy-
ment,” he explained.

It appeared that about 750 persons a day would
be the right number. The visitors yesterday gave
every evidence of enjoyment, and the rooms were
never uncomfortably crowded.

Although a few persons breezed rapidly along
the prescribed route which has been arranged
through the house, the majority walked through
slowly, studying individually the great paintings
which Mr. Frick acquired to adorn his home.

It was calculated in advance that the average
visitor would wish to spend about an hour and a
half seeing the collection. This proved an accurate
forecast. Those who wished to stay somewhat
longer were not disturbed, and visitors found that
an air of quiet hospitality pervaded the house....

Art Lovers Flock
to See Treasures at
Frick Museum

John D. Jr. and Former Boxing
Champ Among First Ten to Enter

The late Henry Clay Fricks huge mansion on
Fifth Avenue, between East Seventieth and Sev-
enty-first Streets, was thrown open to the public
as an art museum today.

Jack Britton, former welterweight boxing
champion, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. were
among the first ten to enter. Thirty persons had
stood in line for the free admission tickets from
9:30 until the opening at 10 A. M. More than 300
had passed through the public galleries before the
noon hour.

The first person to enter, as well as the first in
line, was Gladys Collins, a young art student, who
lives at 135 East Sixty-third Street. She had rushed
home from England to be present at the opening.
This morning she arrived breathless at 9:30
o’clock, having, she assured reporters, run all the
way from home.

Mr. Brittons cauliflowered right ear identified
him as the second in line. He is something of an
expert in visiting public galleries by now and was
tremendously impressed.

“I turned from punching to painting some time
ago,” he explained. Then, “I was an artist in my
own line — I used to paint eyes,” he grinned.

But it wasn’t publicity, it was a genuine interest
in art that drew Mr. Britton from his training
gymnasium in Yonkers to the Frick Museum....

Each Picture Hung
to Best Advantage

By Emily Genauer

The magnificent art collection acquired by the late
Henry Clay Frick, Pittsburgh steel magnate,
before he died in 1919 and bequeathed by him to a
board of trustees for the purpose of “establishing
and maintaining a gallery of art.. .to which the
entire public shall forever have access” will be
opened to that public on Monday....

Experts Stunned at Preview.

There was a preview of the collection on Wednes-
day afternoon — and hundreds of art experts and
collectors, familiar with the fine pictures of the
world, were stunned by the experience.

In the first place, there is nothing here of the
arid, barren frigidity of so many art museums.

16

from The New York Times . December 12, 1935

from the New York Herald Tribune,
December 15, 1935

Instead of being hung on endless, cold, stone
walls, with perhaps a stone bench fifty feet away
where one may rest and meditate, each picture is
hung to fit in best with its surroundings to catch
the light from the windows properly, to harmo-
nize with its neighbors from the point of view of
color, to go with furniture and rugs and porce-
lains — to make, in short, a home. This, you may
say, is taking one’s Rembrandts and El Grecos too
lightly Not really. Each picture stands out like a
perfect jewel in a marvelous diadem, enhanced
alike by setting and surrounding jewels....

Frick Art Exhibition
Reveals a Rich
Pageant of Paintings

By Edward Alden Jewell

While wealth is a prime requisite to the building
of a great art collection, it is by no means the only
one.

Paintings such as the world-famous self-por-
trait by Rembrandt, the “Philip IV of Spain” by
Velasquez, the Duccio “Temptation” (originally in
the glorious zebra-striped cathedral at Siena), the
Bellini “St. Francis in Ecstasy” and Titian’s amaz-

ing portrait of Aretino, to mention but a few of the
most important works in the Frick collection; the
peculiarly splendid group of sixteenth century
Limoges; the rare porcelains and Renaissance
bronzes — the process of acquiring these must pre-
suppose possession of vast material means.

However, an assemblage of art worth journey-
ing far to see cannot be created through the instru-
mentality alone of funds available for a purchase.
Taste and knowledge, a genuine love of art — these
constitute considerations of the utmost impor-
tance. And one realizes at a glance that they have
played their indispensable role in the forming of a
collection such as that of the late Henry Clay
Frick, which, housed in its sumptuous palace on
Fifth Avenue, opened with an official reception
yesterday afternoon and may be visited by the
public beginning next Monday.

This splendid aggregation does not exemplify
the preference of a specialist who concentrated all
his energies upon one school or period or type of
art. Without being aimlessly indiscriminate, it
argues an interest on the part of the collector suf-
ficiently catholic to embrace Italian primitives;
the Renaissance; Dutch, French and English
painting of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, together with diverse yet always character-
istic products of the century just preceding our
own....

As for the Frick collection considered in its
entirety, it cannot, we may be quite certain, turn
any one away empty-handed. And thanks to it

many of us are likely to find our horizons enkin-
dlingly widened.

The Late H.C. Frick
as an Art Collector

By Royal Cortissoz

There is an old story about Mr. Frick which is
apposite today. It relates to his acquisition of one
of the greatest pictures in his collection, “The Pol-
ish Rider” of Rembrandt. From Roger Fry he
learned of its existence, hidden away in the Gali-
cian castle of Count Tarnowski. After making a
few inquiries Mr. Frick himself set negotiations
for it in motion and bought it “off his own bat.” It
was the coup of a true collector. He would listen to
advice but he knew what he liked and wanted.
Legend has it that he bought the Fragonard room
on a decision that it took him only an instant to
make. But it does not require legend to give con-
firmation to his flair. That is provided in the
superlative quality of his works of art. There was a
time, long ago, when, passing through the usual
novitiate of an American connoisseur, he was con-
tent with a Martin Rico or a Ziem. That phase,
however, soon passed. He seems to have escaped
altogether the banalities of the Paris Salon and to

from The New Yorker , December 28, 1935

have gone on, at a stride, to the Barbizon school
and the Old Masters. Interesting light is thrown
on this subject by dates in the catalogue. The beau-
tiful Millet, “Woman Sewing by Lamplight,” was
bought in 1906. So was the Ilchester Rembrandt,
one of the noblest things in all portraiture. Por-
traiture, I may note in passing, was his special
predilection. It crops out in virtually all the schools
represented in the collection. There are some reli-
gious subjects and there are many landscapes, but
the portraits outnumber them.

As for the schools, Mr. Frick was, like most col-
lectors, a wide-ranging eclectic. There are Italian,
Dutch, Spanish, French, British and American
paintings in the collection. Its nearest analogies
are the Wallace collection in London and the
Gardner collection in Boston, inasmuch as these
also present works of art assembled in a private
mansion, but beyond this the analogy breaks
down. The pictures in the Wallace, far more
numerous, are predominantly French. Fenway
Court, while containing such salient pieces as the
Chigi Botticelli, the “Europa” of Titian, and the
two Raphaels, is not so rich as the Frick in major
masterpieces. In what, then, does the distinction
of the Frick consist? In its persistently high qual-
ity, marked every once in so often by some canvas
of unique splendor. I need only mention at ran-
dom the two Rembrandts already cited, the
Velasquez “Philip IV,” the Titian “Aretino,” the
Bellini “St. Francis,” Vermeers “Mistress and
Maid Servant,” Gainsborough’s landscape with

18

figures, “The Mall,” and the “Comtesse d’Haus-
sonville” of Ingres. These glorious things would by
themselves furnish forth a museum — and there
are more. This is truly a cosmos of great works of
art, and Mr. Frick’s dream of bequeathing it to the
public, filled not only with pictures but with sculp-
tures, enamels, porcelains and other treasures, has
been beautifully fulfilled. Installed in a stately yet
intimate and friendly atmosphere, in a house
which Mr. Pope has enlarged without depriving it
of its essential character, the collection stands out
as a landmark in the history of art in America....

Fifth Avenue’s
New Museum

[By Lewis Mumford]

Thanks and rebellion contended for a place in my
heart as I went through the newly opened Frick
museum, and I am afraid that my baser feelings
have won out. For the moment, I should like to
look our new gift horse impolitely in the mouth,
and not merely bite the hand that feeds us but take
a nip or two at the ankles for good measure....

No doubt the barriers protect the carved chests,
the Renaissance chairs, and the sculptural bric-a-
brac from the prying hands of the curious, but

unfortunately they completely sacrifice the paint-
ings to these very minor works of art....

Mischief like the misconceived administrative
regulations can easily be repaired, even if this
involves putting the bric-a-brac down in the cel-
lar. But what shall one say of the general scheme
of converting a private mansion into a public
museum, and making the new galleries conform,
in their general design and fulsome decorative
background, to the rest of the house? The latter
step, it seems to me, merely doubled the original
error. A historical collection of paintings repre-
sents fifty different modes of life and physical set-
tings; and the best background for the paintings
and sculpture of the past is no background at all —
the bare walls of a modern building, such as
Barnard provided in the original Cloisters. While
the scale of the Frick museum is fine, the decora-
tive scheme — except in the Fragonard and
Boucher rooms, where the rooms themselves are
the frame — is a nuisance. The paintings are lost in
the background. That may have satisfied the taste
of Renaissance princes, or even that of American
millionaires during the first part of the present
century, but it no longer meets today’s standard of
presentation.

Living Hall

from the Washington, D.C., Sunday Star ,
January 5, 1936

Legacy of Beauty
Left by Frick Spread
Before World

By Lucy Salamanca

Well-known novelist and short story writer.

...Surely in all the annals of art there is no museum
comparable to this! There are vaster halls and
more architecturally overwhelming corridors of
art, but here has been captured the very essence of
beauty, the spirit itself of fine and lovely things.
“Four centuries look down on you,” N apoleon told
his army before the Sphinx; here all time breathes
along brocaded walls....

20

©1995 by The Frick Collection

Excerpts from “Masterpieces of Frick Collection Willed to City,” Oct. 10,
1931; “New Frick Reference Library Is Ideally Equipped for Art Research,”
Jan. 12, 1935; and “Frick Art Gallery to Open to Public On December 16,”
Dec. 14, 1935, all © The Art News, courtesy of the publisher.

Excerpts from “Picture Library,” Jan. 21, 1935, copyright 1935 Time Inc.
Reprinted by permission.

Excerpts from “Frick Art Will Go to Public Dec. 16,” Dec. 8, 1935; “Frick
Art Exhibition Reveals...,” by Edward Alden Jewell, Dec. 12, 1935; “Mr.
Frick’s Monument,” Dec. 13, 1935; and “Frick Art Museum Opened to Pub-
lic,” Dec. 17, 1935, all copyright © 1935 by The New York Times Company.
Reprinted by permission.

Excerpts from “Art Lovers Flock to See Treasures at Frick Museum,” Dec.
16, 1935, © The New York Post.

Excerpts from “Fifth Avenue’s New Museum, ’ published in The New
Yorker, Dec. 28, 1935, reprinted by permission of Gina Maccoby Literary
Agency, copyright © 1935 by Lewis Mumford, renewed 1963.

Garden Court